We close with ten questions that we believe management teams should periodically ask themselves about their companies and should include at the start of every review of their basic growth strategy. We remain struck by the contemporary relevance of this observation from Sun-Tzu's The Art of War: 'The more opportunities that I seize, the more opportunities that multiply before me.' The solution often requires the injection of new management talent along with a strategic redirection. Often the historic management team has done a superb job of building and tending the core but along the way has acquired biases and habits that make it difficult to see the need for and commit serious resources to a strategic shift. In lower-growth markets, the most common problem is excessive mining of the core combined with a failure to see the emerging new landscape and possibilities. The history of management in both the computer industry and Internet start-ups shows this pattern over and over. The solution involves focusing more tightly around a strategy and, frequently, introducing management capabilities to deal with a larger, more complex, faster-moving company. Jim Vincent, CEO of Biogen, a classic 'profit from the core' success story, has argued convincingly in interviews that this capacity issue is the number-one CEO growth constraint, in his experience. In high-growth markets, the most common organization-versus-strategy problem is inadequate management capacity for growth and rapid decision making combined with a lack of central direction, allowing many marginal and defocusing growth initiatives to sap resources. Conversely, a superb organization can shape and adapt even a mediocre strategy into a winner.

A strategy built for an organization that cannot execute it is not a good strategy, by definition. Sometimes these problems can coexist and are difficult to separate.

A key issue for senior executives wrestling with growth problems or frustrations is determining whether the company's strategy is wrong or whether the organization is not able to execute it.

Pro fit the profit